Edward Snowden, former CIA employee, comes forward as source of NSA leaks (with video interview)

By artappraiser on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 9:34pm |

By Aaron Blake, Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, Washington Post, June 9, 6:20 PM

A 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee said Sunday that he was the principal source of recent disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs, exposing himself to possible prosecution in an acknowledgment that had little if any precedent in the long history of U.S. intelligence leaks.

Edward Snowden, a tech specialist who has also contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, unmasked himself as a source after a string of stories in The Washington Post and the Guardian that detailed previously unknown U.S. surveillance programs. He said he disclosed secret documents in response to what he described as the systematic surveillance of innocent citizens.

In an interview Sunday, Snowden said he is willing to face the consequences of exposure.“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong [....]

“This is significant on a number of fronts: the scope, the range. It’s major, it’s major,” said John Rizzo, a former general counsel of the CIA who worked at the agency for decades. “And then to have him out himself . . . I can’t think of any previous leak case involving a CIA officer where the officer raised his hand and said, ‘I’m the guy.’ ” [....]

URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/intelligence-leaders-push-back-on-leakers-media/2013/06/09/fff80160-d122-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html

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This is fascinating.

I wonder why the system doesn't track high-security individuals who suddenly start making calls to reporters.

(A fix that may already be underway.) :^(

by erica20 on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 2:47am

WaPo/Gellman vs. Guardian/Greenwald stuff going on:

N.S.A. Whistle-Blower Revealed in Video
By Robert Mackey, The Lede, June 10, 2013

[....] After The Guardian published the video and a long article about Mr. Snowden, The Washington Post followed with a first-person account of the reporter Barton Gellman’s interactions with the same source.

According to Mr. Gellman, his source went to Mr. Greenwald only after he grew concerned that The Post might delay publication and put him in danger. The Guardian columnist took issue with the Post reporter’s claims in a barbed note posted on Twitter.[.....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 1:00pm

Daniel Ellsberg @ The Guardian: Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 1:19pm

The differences between whistleblowing Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning -- and some similarities to Daniel Ellsberg
By Thomas E. Ricks, The Best Defense @ ForeignPolicy.com, June 10, 2013

[.....] I opposed what Manning did. I thought his actions were reckless. He did a data dump, making secret information public without knowing what it was or what he was really doing. [.....] Manning's act was that of a goofball anarchist. Snowden's, by contrast, seems to have been one of civil disobedience. That is, he seems to have known exactly what he was doing. Snowden does seem to have some elements of Manning, a mixed-up kid, but on balance seems to me to be more of an Ellsberg -- that is, a disillusioned insider who was appalled by what he saw and made a choice to disclose the existence of certain government programs [.....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 2:04pm

John Cassidy: A hero; Jeffrey Toobin: No hero.

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 8:22pm

One reason why a "conversation" was needed explained, my bold (and notably, different reasoning from Ellsberg's above, who emphasizes, among other things, the FISA court) :

This is, hands down, the scariest part of the NSA revelations
By Shane Harris, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, June 10, 2013

Forget PRISM, the National Security Agency's system to help extract data from Google, Facebook, and the like. The more frightening secret program unearthed by the NSA leaks is the gathering and storing of millions of phone records and phone-location information of U.S. citizens.

According to current and former intelligence agency employees who have used the huge collection of metadata obtained from the country's largest telecom carriers, the information is widely available across the intelligence community from analysts' desktop computers.

The data is used to connect known or suspected terrorists to people in the United States, and to help locate them. It has also been used in foreign criminal investigations and to assist military forces overseas. But the laws that govern the collection of this information and its use are not as clear. Nor are they as strong as those associated with PRISM, the system the NSA is using to collate information from the servers of America's tech giants.

Metadata is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Content of emails and instant messages -- what PRISM helps gather -- is. An order issued to Verizon by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court instructs the company to supply records of all its telephony metadata "on an ongoing, daily basis." Although legal experts say this kind of broad collection of metadata may be legal, it's also "remarkably overbroad and quite likely unwise," according to Paul Rosenzweig, a Bush administration policy official in the Homeland Security Department. "It is difficult to imagine a set of facts that would justify collecting all telephony meta-data in America. While we do live in a changed world after 9/11, one would hope it has not that much changed."

By comparison, PRISM appears more tightly constrained and operates on a more solid legal foundation. Current and former officials who have experience using huge sets of data available to intelligence analysts said that PRISM is used for precisely the kinds of intelligence gathering that Congress and the administration intended when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 2008. Officials wanted to allow intelligence agencies to target and intercept foreigners' communications when they travel across networks inside the United States. [....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 1:49pm

Jane Mayer with similar, from NewYorker.com, June 6: What's the Matter with Metadata?:

....according to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau"....The public doesn’t understand,” she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. “It’s much more intrusive than content....

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 1:52pm

Yeah, the funny thing is, if they snooped my calls or blogs, someone would have to listen to my ideas, and maybe I'd create another Snowden.

Instead they just machine-wise cross-correlate all the info about you from every angle, put you in a behavior box, autogenerate some trend liines, and boom, they have your suspicious activiity labled if they need it and all the background tracing if they need court evidence, check who your friends, family & acquaintances are if they need some help pressuring someone to confess or cooperate, and can autopop up a warrant request if they have to to go to rubberstamp FISA for some actual filler for one of their content boxes (on stuff that's not already public).

Over several years of blogging, I've often been fairly careful to not give too much of my personal detail, exactly where I'm from, exactly where I live - as much because I just don't like it to influence impressions of what I . But I'm sure a good big data program that will of course scarf up my few hundred diaries & 20,000 comments and piece together likely details, plus note my access IPs, cross-correlate them with every other email I have, every other blog or social site I've ever been on, pattern search all the content of any public postings, whoever angry or ironic it might be over 20 years, see if anything triggers an autoresponse, figure out who are people like me & who I know, where I've worked & gone to school and lived and talked to, etc., etc, etc.

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 1:14am

I hear they call the BIG Daddy computer, 'Edgar' and that the company saying is, 'Suck it up like a Hoover''. But really, in the real world, what is to worry about, what could go wrong? And besides, if you're not doing anything wrong ... ... ...

by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 3:06am

Ask me if I've ever done anything right.

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 9:49am

The risky legal strategy behind Edward Snowden's flight to Hong Kong
By Elias Groll, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, June 10, 2013

[....] Snowden's flight to Hong Kong has added a geopolitical dimension to his case and sparked speculation in the media that his fate will be decided by Beijing. Unfortunately, this speculation may be based on a misreading of the extradition agreement. While the treaty includes language that allows both Hong Kong and the United States to decline extradition for reasons relating to "the defence, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy" of China and the United States, it appears to state that this exception only applies to the extradition of American citizens to Hong Kong and Chinese citizens to the United States (see Article 3).

This language has been used to imply that China has the ability to bulldoze Hong Kong's court system, but the island's judiciary has consistently demonstrated a remarkable degree of independence, even after China's assumption of sovereignty over the territory. Not only is Hong Kong's judicial system modeled on the British system, but many of its judges are British holdovers [.....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 1:57pm

The WaPo changed the wording of its original story The government had to request access from the companies. This is vastly different than the government having direct access.

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 4:37pm

It does appear that Congress was briefed.

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 5:46pm

Prism and the metadata program are not one and the same, see above @ 1:45. Prism is subject to FISA.

On the request point, I have seen it stated that Twitter refused, though I haven't really checked much about that out. (Strikes me offhand as kind of ironic, because most Twitter users, in this country at least, aren't looking for anonymity, but for more people to follow their tweets from their phones.)

Thanks for adding to the thread.

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 8:15pm

Metadata appears to be regarded in a manner similar to trash left out on the curb. The data is no longer your property.

by rmrd0000 on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 8:19pm

Just like having a private eye tail you wherever you go 24x7 taking notes, recording your conversations - hey, you're in public, why should it matter? You said it out loud, why shouldn't someone/everyone listen?

by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 1:17am

How the leaks went down:

Cryptic Overtures and a Clandestine Meeting Gave Birth to a Blockbuster Story,

by Charlie Savage and Mark Mazzetti @ New York Times, June 10, 2013

by artappraiser on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 2:17pm

Mr. Snowden’s decision to stay in Hong Kong came as a person with knowledge of the Hong Kong government’s work on the case said local government lawyers, working with United States government lawyers, had identified 36 offenses with which Mr. Snowden could be charged under both Hong Kong and American laws.

The United States and Hong Kong operate under a 1996 bilateral extradition agreement, and any attempt by the United States to extradite Mr. Snowden would have to cite offenses that violate the laws in both countries, are punishable by jail terms of a year or more and meet the terms of that agreement. One of the 36 offenses involves the release of official secrets, which is illegal in Hong Kong and the United States, said the person familiar with Hong Kong government efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate legal and diplomatic aspects of the case.

Mr. Snowden could delay extradition proceedings by requesting political asylum in Hong Kong. But he will almost certainly be taken into custody and jailed as soon as he files for asylum, because he would no longer qualify as a visitor to Hong Kong, the person said.

from

N.S.A. Leaker Vows to Fight Extradition From Hong Kong
By Keith Bradsher, New York Times, June 12, 2013

with much more on the legal details therein (Bradsher does have excellent connections/sources in both Hong Kong and China, mho.)

by artappraiser on Wed, 06/12/2013 - 5:19pm

Occurs to me that bringing up U.S. hacking of Hong Kong targets in the interview with the South China Morning Post may be an attempt to affect the above government proceedings/procedures.

by artappraiser on Wed, 06/12/2013 - 5:33pm

"The Falcon" speaks his thoughts to a CNN reporter,

and

NYT's Keith Bradsher, working overtime in Hong Kong , getting a lot of conflicting answers from people who ought to know wassup....

by artappraiser on Sat, 06/15/2013 - 12:52am

He was on the job at Booz only 4 weeks, then took the unpaid medical leave of absence, and when he did not come back from that, the Feds did go looking for him, from Mark Rosenball @ Reuters:

Snowden already had a Top Secret clearance before he joined Booz Allen in April, two sources said, adding that he likely obtained that clearance - which involves passing a polygraph exam - when he previously worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

For his first week or two with Booz Allen, Snowden attended training sessions near Fort Meade, the Maryland military installation where NSA headquarters is located and where numerous agency contractors have offices.

After that, Snowden moved to take up his assignment with a company team based at the NSA installation in Hawaii. He was only on the job for around four weeks when he told his employers he was ill and requested leave without pay, the sources said.

When Booz Allen checked in with him, Snowden said he was suffering from epilepsy and needed more time off. When he failed to return after a longer period, and the company could not find him, it notified intelligence officials because of Snowden's high-level security clearance, one of the sources said.

Government agents spent several days in the field trying to find Snowden, according to the source, but they were unable to do so before the first news story based on Snowden's revelations appeared in the Guardian and then in the Washington Post.

The government did not know Snowden was the source for the stories until he admitted it on Sunday, the sources said.

Noted this conflict:

Several sources said that as a systems administrator, Snowden would have been unable to actively spy on people, even though he told the Guardian newspaper, "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President."

So does that mean he was saying that a systems administrator geek like him could hack the database without authorization? Probably not, because he uses the words "had the authority." Hosenball's sources are implying a Systems Administrator does not have that authority.

by artappraiser on Sat, 06/15/2013 - 6:09pm

Probably not, because he uses the words "had the authority." Hosenball's sources are implying a Systems Administrator does not have that authority.

Ever since hearing that statement by Snowden I have assumed that he misspoke when he used the word "authority". I think he must have meant that he had the ability. Surely he didn't have the authority to choose, on his own volition, to eavesdrop on the President's communications even if the system made it possible.

So does that mean he was saying that a systems administrator geek like him could hack the database without authorization?

I think that is what he was saying, that his position made it possible to access anything in the data base with, but also obviously without, authorization.

by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 06/15/2013 - 9:10pm

Surely he didn't have the authority to choose, on his own volition, to eavesdrop on the President's communications even if the system made it possible.

Good point. So it remains unclear what he meant by that....

by artappraiser on Sat, 06/15/2013 - 9:26pm

They talked about the access problem in the Guardian chat today. Sounds to me like he is claiming that the system was set up lousy as to security of privacy rights and therefore 1) is invaded without good authority all the time "by accident" and 2) when "warrants" are involved they are not much more than just rubber stamped forms:

@ 11:27 am and @ 11:40am

Question:

Anthony De Rosa

17 June 2013 2:18pm

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/17/2013 - 3:43pm

He explains more @ 11:55 am, about the problem with the filters:

Question:

MonaHol

17 June 2013 4:37pm

Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Answer:

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

by artappraiser on Mon, 06/17/2013 - 3:50pm

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